American ignorance - prejudice, statistical fact or cultural differences?

[fable]

Originally posted by Gruntboy:
<STRONG>Yeah, that fable is one ignorant American MF. </STRONG>

ROFL! But of course.

[Gruntboy]

Hey Ingoramus! How's it going?

EDIT - This slip on "ignoramus" is so funny I'm leaving it in.

[ 11-19-2001: Message edited by: Gruntboy ]

[Darkpoet]

Originally posted by Gruntboy:
<STRONG>It worked. Dumb yanks...

</STRONG>

Yeah, but us dumb Yanks. Kicked your ass.

[Gruntboy]

I don't deny it, dumbo.

[fable]

Originally posted by Gruntboy:
<STRONG>Hey Ingoramus! How's it going?
</STRONG>

Duh, what can I say, without thinking? And thinking makes me overheat my brain.

[ 11-19-2001: Message edited by: fable ]

[Darkpoet]

Originally posted by Gruntboy:
<STRONG>I don't deny it, dumbo. </STRONG>

LMAO Damn, is my arrogance showing again. I just can't control it.
When are you UKer's going to give us some good beer???? Only the Scot's and the Irish, have the best Ale and Stout in the world. Where is yours???

[Gruntboy]

Duh?!

[fable]

To gain a sense of how the US understands or treats such matters as learning and culture, I think it's important to analyze the views of the primary social groups who established norms of behavior in the country over the years. I'd just like to briefly sketch out a few here, since it would be too complex a subject to treat adequately in anything less than a book, and I have no illusions about being the person who could write such a work.

17th century: Many of the colonies that started in the US had little in the way of focused cultural agendas, but there were exceptions. The first is the Puritans, the so-called Dissenters, who were exclusionist and xenophobic in their views, and who influenced the attitudes of many people in what became the Northeastern US industrial hub, located originally in Massachusetts. The Puritan attitude to learning was one of great suspicion. They associated it with their enemies (and those naturally of their God), the Anglicans and the Roman Church, and with the Royal Courts that supposedly "harassed them" regularly. (Said harassment often resulted from Puritans physically attacking in public women they've never met before who were wearing makeup, or using a new style dress, for example. One Puritan, John Prynne, had his ears docked after picking up a piece of leather in a marketplace and using it to thrash a housewife he'd never met before because her clothes revealed her neck.) Learning could be a dangerous tool easily used to pervert the Word of God. It was tolerable only among those who held to the right ideas about religion and establishing God's community here on earth (the old Augustinian dream). They did believe strongly in schools and basic literacy, but these Dissenters had zero tolerance for any dissent within their own little country. The educational institutions and views that they came out of this general culture have been noted through history for their depth, but also for their rigidity.

Another major colonial center which developed a recognizable cultural nucleus was New Amsterdam. It was fully Dutch, with a Nederlander's respect for craft and art. At the time, however, the Dutch were not known internationally for their learning, despite the presence of several important scientists and mathematicians among Holland's citizenry. (Read Simon Schama's The Embarassment of Riches for more details. Really. Great book. ) New Amsterdam was a bustling, young international hub, but it had no great opinion of book knowledge, since its main sphere of activity was uninvolved with the concept.

18th century: Philadelphia became one of the main cultural centers in the Americas. Today, the city is proud of its origins through William Penn, the famed Quaker, but carefully forgets to note that Penn was pushed out of office very quickly by mercantile interests who had a different vision of the city, and he left in great bitterness. There was a small but active contingent of knowledgeable philanthropists in the city who were responsible for generating many of its artistic, architectural and intellectual activities. Ben Franklin may have been the most famous in his time, but he was by no means alone. Still, while Philadelphia led the way towards developing greater literacy through the first public library in the new US, it did not enjoy a reputation for higher education.

This was the Golden Age of the American South. A deliberate attempt was made to create an Arcadian culture based upon plantation farming, where advancement was open to all who had personal character, drive, intelligence and good manners. Surprisingly, surviving examples we know of into the early 19th century seem to back up many of these claims; poverty was no hindrance when new land was available for settling, and the reins of government and military needed new, capable administrators and heroes. While France through the ages has likened itself to Ancient Greece (the sheer weight of all the artwork devoted to Aeneas and the Trojans, whom the French considered their spiritual ancestors, would stock a museum larger than the Louvre, IMO), the American South strove to emulate Ancient Rome. It developed a culture based on leisure and wealth used for the appreciation of the arts. Its best representatives, like Jefferson and Madison in Virginia, Davie in North Carolina, Pinckney and John Rutledge in South Carolina, and Baldwin in Georgia, were either immigrants drawn by this philosophy or men of "high character and learning" who naturally drew similar spirits to themselves. Many native sons developed out of obscure and penurious backgrounds into wealthy experts on a range of subjects. As Andrew Jackson, Midwestern hero and eventual president but bred in the South, once said, "All a man needs to make his way is a $100 dollars, two slaves, and determination."

Which pretty much points to one of the great limitations of the Arcadian system: like the Greek, Roman, and Indian systems before it, the system was predicated upon the workload being borne by a laboring subclass that had no say in their living conditions and no recourse under law. The root of its wealth lay in disenfranchisement. The fact that most slaveowners worked the fields alongside their slaves did nothing to alter that fact.

The second problem with this system was its unwillingness to embrace industrialism. Jefferson apothesized a legendary past where each person was valued for what they were, rather than cogs in an industrial machine. (Jefferson hated industrialized England, as you might guess.) Considerable learning and respect for learning did come out of the South at this time, and much of it has yet to be carefully explored; but the foundations of such a system were doomed to a very short life from the start.

19th/20th centuries: This was the era of the two great raw frontiers, the Midwest, and the West. Learning counted for little, there: film mythology to the contrary, you got what you wanted by hard, physical labor. The immigrants who frequently settled in these areas were sturdy, cooperative groups whose population centers lacked much impetus for higher learning. They didn't fear it like the Puritans, but they didn't care much for it, either. They also tended to have a bias against higher education, based upon the international suspicion that rural populations usually possess towards educated urbanites who do no "honest work" with their hands.

After the War of Secession/Civil War, the South went into a great decline. Some learning remained, but it largely turned inward, producing (for example) vast lineage charts and extensively researched histories of local heroes. (Lee's own papers and Jefferson Davis' work on the Secession War are among the finest instances of this.) Without the industrial and labor-intensive means to support an agrarian system, the culture based upon learning-acquired-through-leisure withered.

The second third of the century also witnessed the first great manifestation of immigrant hatred and anti-global feeling in the US. It coalesced into the Know Nothing Party, which was anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish and anti-Europe. During its brief period of ascendency, the Know Nothings (who captured the presidency with Milliard Filmore) enacted a vast number of laws forbidding people of various ethnic origins from holding public office or even taking up selected professions. The Know Nothings were also determinedly anti-intellectual. They despised education, which they felt (with some reason) exposed Americans to non-American ideas. While their time at the 19th century political top was brief, they represent a constant conservative thread in the US which occasionally has had a major impact on foreign and domestic policies.

In the last quarter of the 19th century (and into the first quarter of the 20th), the first great European immigrations of modern times started. These were the waves of foriegn-born who formed cultural enclaves that still affect the US, today: the Irish, Poles, Germans, East Europeans, and East European Jews who frequently settled in New York City, Boston, and Chicago. The Irish came from workingclass backgrounds to escape oppressive British rule and famines; the Poles and Germans also left, frequently, to escape economic hardship. But there was in addition a strong middleclass intellectual and artistic element who fled Eastern and Central Europe because of political upheaval. These well-educated people "jump-started" a lot of subsequent American scientific and industrial development, and created a flourishing artistic community which (among other things) literally remade Hollywood in the late 1920s. (For example, all those wonderful outdoors city, suburban and prairie scenes in 30s and 40s Hollywood studios were filmed indoors, on elaborate soundstages, originally designed for films by the great German production house, UFA. When their directors and stars--like Dietrich, Veidt, Lorre, Jannings, etc--moved to Hollywood, all this technical know-how was imported and used at the same time.)

Their influence on American attitudes in general were less prevalent. Many of the more intellectual immigrants were politically left-of-center, which automatically separated them from the US' predominantly conservative political climate except during the Great Depression. (It's funny how farmers and ranchers can suddenly realize a tremendous fellowship with all the downtrodden when they're being foreclosed. ) Quite a few of those who arrived in the 1920s and 30s, as refugees from Nazism and Stalism, fled again to the UK in the 50s, when the US lurched far to the Right once more under its biggest Red Scare to date.

Recent years have seen an explosion in Central and South American immigration: so much so, that the latest US census confirms that Chicanos now outnumber Blacks as the second largest minority in the US. There is a very strong, erudite, sophisticated culture of ideas and creativity in these nations, but once more, we're seeing that most immigrants are the working poor, seeking an escape from both economic hardship and military oppression. If anything, their voting habits have shown them to fit into the moderately conservative zone by US standards.

All the above is incredibly sketchy, but hopefully gives some picture of the influences at work in the US regarding attitudes towards education and the public forum for ideas. I would suggest that as a rule, the US has been populated by successive waves of workingclass rural families who, in most of their cultural traditions held urban intellectuals in disdain. They fit into a national ethic that included a respect for manual labor and material wealth, and a dislike for people who weren't seen to be doing this or seeking identical goals. Not that this is necessarily all negative; the American labor movement which was so powerful in the early 20th century (and which influenced many other nations) derives from the same mindset.

But it can't be said that these forces, combined with a natural geographical isolation, were enducements to educational development and respect. Practical knowledge in America *is* respected: from the ability to repair a car, to the ability to run a large, multi-million dollar company. But non-applicable knowledge, as we might call it--which includes theoretical sciences, but also the arts, and cultural disciplines--are regarded as superfluous timewasters. Such, at least, is my conclusion.

[ 11-19-2001: Message edited by: fable ]

[Darkpoet]

Originally posted by fable:
<STRONG>To gain a sense of how the US understands or treats such matters as learning and culture, I think it's important to analyze the views of the primary social groups who established norms of behavior in the country over the years. I'd just like to briefly sketch out a few here, since it would be too complex a subject to treat adequately in anything less than a book, and I have no illusions about being the person who could write such a work.

17th century: Many of the colonies that started in the US had little in the way of focused cultural agendas, but there were exceptions. The first is the Puritans, the so-called Dissenters, who were exclusionist and xenophobic in their views, and who influenced the attitudes of many people in what became the Northeastern US industrial hub, located originally in Massachusetts. The Puritan attitude to learning was one of great suspicion. They associated it with their enemies (and those naturally of their God), the Anglicans and the Roman Church, and with the Royal Courts that supposedly "harassed them" regularly. (Said harassment often resulted from Puritans physically attacking in public women they've never met before who were wearing makeup, or using a new style dress, for example. One Puritan, John Prynne, had his ears docked after picking up a piece of leather in a marketplace and using it to thrash a housewife he'd never met before because her clothes revealed her neck.) Learning could be a dangerous tool easily used to pervert the Word of God. It was tolerable only among those who held to the right ideas about religion and establishing God's community here on earth (the old Augustinian dream). They did believe strongly in schools and basic literacy, but these Dissenters had zero tolerance for any dissent within their own little country. The educational institutions and views that they came out of this general culture have been noted through history for their depth, but also for their rigidity.

Another major colonial center which developed a recognizable cultural nucleus was New Amsterdam. It was fully Dutch, with a Nederlander's respect for craft and art. At the time, however, the Dutch were not known internationally for their learning, despite the presence of several important scientists and mathematicians among Holland's citizenry. (Read Simon Schama's The Embarassment of Riches for more details. Really. Great book. ) New Amsterdam was a bustling, young international hub, but it had no great opinion of book knowledge, since its main sphere of activity was uninvolved with the concept.

18th century: Philadelphia became one of the main cultural centers in the Americas. Today, the city is proud of its origins through William Penn, the famed Quaker, but carefully forgets to note that Penn was pushed out of office very quickly by mercantile interests who had a different vision of the city, and he left in great bitterness. There was a small but active contingent of knowledgeable philanthropists in the city who were responsible for generating many of its artistic, architectural and intellectual activities. Ben Franklin may have been the most famous in his time, but he was by no means alone. Still, while Philadelphia led the way towards developing greater literacy through the first public library in the new US, it did not enjoy a reputation for higher education.

This was the Golden Age of the American South. A deliberate attempt was made to create an Arcadian culture based upon plantation farming, where advancement was open to all who had personal character, drive, intelligence and good manners. Surprisingly, surviving examples we know of into the early 19th century seem to back up many of these claims; poverty was no hindrance when new land was available for settling, and the reins of government and military needed new, capable administrators and heroes. While France through the ages has likened itself to Ancient Greece (the sheer weight of all the artwork devoted to Aeneas and the Trojans, whom the French considered their spiritual ancestors, would stock a museum larger than the Louvre, IMO), the American South strove to emulate Ancient Rome. It developed a culture based on leisure and wealth used for the appreciation of the arts. Its best representatives, like Jefferson and Madison in Virginia, Davie in North Carolina, Pinckney and John Rutledge in South Carolina, and Baldwin in Georgia, were either immigrants drawn by this philosophy or men of "high character and learning" who naturally drew similar spirits to themselves. Many native sons developed out of obscure and penurious backgrounds into wealthy experts on a range of subjects. As Andrew Jackson, Midwestern hero and eventual president but bred in the South, once said, "All a man needs to make his way is a $100 dollars, two slaves, and determination."

Which pretty much points to one of the great limitations of the Arcadian system: like the Greek, Roman, and Indian systems before it, the system was predicated upon the workload being borne by a laboring subclass that had no say in their living conditions and no recourse under law. The root of its wealth lay in disenfranchisement. The fact that most slaveowners worked the fields alongside their slaves did nothing to alter that fact.

The second problem with this system was its unwillingness to embrace industrialism. Jefferson apothesized a legendary past where each person was valued for what they were, rather than cogs in an industrial machine. (Jefferson hated industrialized England, as you might guess.) Considerable learning and respect for learning did come out of the South at this time, and much of it has yet to be carefully explored; but the foundations of such a system were doomed to a very short life from the start.

19th/20th centuries: This was the era of the two great raw frontiers, the Midwest, and the West. Learning counted for little, there: film mythology to the contrary, you got what you wanted by hard, physical labor. The immigrants who frequently settled in these areas were sturdy, cooperative groups whose population centers lacked much impetus for higher learning. They didn't fear it like the Puritans, but they didn't care much for it, either. They also tended to have a bias against higher education, based upon the international suspicion that rural populations usually possess towards educated urbanites who do no "honest work" with their hands.

After the War of Secession/Civil War, the South went into a great decline. Some learning remained, but it largely turned inward, producing (for example) vast lineage charts and extensively researched histories of local heroes. (Lee's own papers and Jefferson Davis' work on the Secession War are among the finest instances of this.) Without the industrial and labor-intensive means to support an agrarian system, the culture based upon learning-acquired-through-leisure withered.

The second third of the century also witnessed the first great manifestation of immigrant hatred and anti-global feeling in the US. It coalesced into the Know Nothing Party, which was anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish and anti-Europe. During its brief period of ascendency, the Know Nothings (who captured the presidency with Milliard Filmore) enacted a vast number of laws forbidding people of various ethnic origins from holding public office or even taking up selected professions. The Know Nothings were also determinedly anti-intellectual. They despised education, which they felt (with some reason) exposed Americans to non-American ideas. While their time at the 19th century political top was brief, they represent a constant conservative thread in the US which occasionally has had a major impact on foreign and domestic policies.

In the last quarter of the 19th century (and into the first quarter of the 20th), the first great European immigrations of modern times started. These were the waves of foriegn-born who formed cultural enclaves that still affect the US, today: the Irish, Poles, Germans, East Europeans, and East European Jews who frequently settled in New York City, Boston, and Chicago. The Irish came from workingclass backgrounds to escape oppressive British rule and famines; the Poles and Germans also left, frequently, to escape economic hardship. But there was in addition a strong middleclass intellectual and artistic element who fled Eastern and Central Europe because of political upheaval. These well-educated people "jump-started" a lot of subsequent American scientific and industrial development, and created a flourishing artistic community which (among other things) literally remade Hollywood in the late 1920s.

Their influence on American attitudes in general were less prevalent. Many of the more intellectual immigrants were politically left-of-center, which automatically separated them from the US' predominantly conservative political climate except during the Great Depression. (It's funny how farmers and ranchers can suddenly realize a tremendous fellowship with all the downtrodden when they're being foreclosed. ) Quite a few of those who arrived in the 1920s and 30s, as refugees from Nazism and Stalism, fled again to the UK in the 50s, when the US lurched far to the Right once more under its biggest Red Scare to date.

Recent years have seen an explosion in Central and South American immigration: so much so, that the latest US census confirms that Chicanos now outnumber Blacks as the second largest minority in the US. There is a very strong, erudite, sophisticated culture of ideas and creativity in these nations, but once more, we're seeing that most immigrants are the working poor, seeking an escape from both economic hardship and military oppression. If anything, their voting habits have shown them to fit into the moderately conservative zone by US standards.

All the above is incredibly sketchy, but hopefully gives some picture of the influences at work in the US regarding attitudes towards education and the public forum for ideas. I would suggest that as a rule, the US has been populated by successive waves of workingclass rural families who, in most of their cultural traditions held urban intellectuals in disdain. They fit into a national ethic that included a respect for manual labor and material wealth, and a dislike for people who weren't seen to be doing this or seeking identical goals. Not that this is necessarily all negative; the American labor movement which was so powerful in the early 20th century (and which influenced many other nations) derives from the same mindset.

But it can't be said that these forces, combined with a natural geographical isolation, were enducements to educational development and respect. Practical knowledge in America *is* respected: from the ability to repair a car, to the ability to run a large, multi-million dollar company. But non-applicable knowledge, as we might call it--which includes theoretical sciences, but also the arts, and cultural disciplines--are regarded as superfluous timewasters. Such, at least, is my conclusion.

[ 11-19-2001: Message edited by: fable ]</STRONG>

With all you just posted. Still doesn't help me to understand, why Bud Dry is suppose to be a dry beer. But, if I pour it on your head, you will get wet???

[fable]

Originally posted by Darkpoet:
<STRONG>
With all you just posted. Still doesn't help me to understand, why Bud Dry is suppose to be a dry beer. But, if I pour it on your head, you will get wet???</STRONG>

Remember the Force, Luke.

[Happy Evil]

Originally posted by Darkpoet:
<STRONG>
With all you just posted. Still doesn't help me to understand, why Bud Dry is suppose to be a dry beer. But, if I pour it on your head, you will get wet???</STRONG>

Your not really pouring out a perfectly good beer to prove a point are you?!
You treacherous fiend!!!

[Darkpoet]

Originally posted by fable:
<STRONG>Remember the Force, Luke. </STRONG>

He did and what did that get him??? He lost a hand and now has a dead father. And at one time he lusted after his sister.

[fable]

Originally posted by Darkpoet:
<STRONG>He did and what did that get him??? He lost a hand and now has a dead father. And at one time he lusted after his sister. </STRONG>

Dead, true, but still capable of comfortably supporting an actor and his family as he watches over the poor lad. And as for his sister, his ignorant upbringing is at fault. No one in their right mind could fall for anyone who utters so many freedom-fighter cliches in so few breaths. It's unnatural.

[Darkpoet]

Originally posted by fable:
<STRONG>Dead, true, but still capable of comfortably supporting an actor and his family as he watches over the poor lad. And as for his sister, his ignorant upbringing is at fault. No one in their right mind could fall for anyone who utters so many freedom-fighter cliches in so few breaths. It's unnatural. </STRONG>

Thank goodness that BG2 cleared up that Imoen is the sister. Oh god! I'm just as bad as Luke.

Well, I might as well find my cousin Bo, so we can hop in the General Lee and try to hit on cousin Daisy.

[fable]

Originally posted by Darkpoet:
<STRONG>Well, I might as well find my cousin Bo, so we can hop in the General Lee and try to hit on cousin Daisy. </STRONG>

You realize the Old General would probably have died from exposure to his name used in that series? Besides, he was never known for his speed. It was his incredible ability to grasp the strategic use of the battle terrain and the complete respect given him by his brilliant commanders that really won Lee a lot of victories, and lessened a lot of defeats.

[ 11-19-2001: Message edited by: fable ]

[CM]

Ysh that is a sweepng statement, but that is what i think.
People in the third world from what i have seen do pay more attention in foriegn affairs esp in key nations, for pakistan it would be china, india and Saudi Arabia.
There is no need for americans to do so and they IMHO don't care.
As Thorin said they live in a great country with a great deal of comforts.
But that doesn't mean you ignore what is happening outside.

@fable, what the heck do you do for a living???

@SS so you basically agree with me?

Sorry folks really tired.
Post more later on.
Heck i still need to post in thet CRPG thread.

[Sailor Saturn]

Originally posted by Fas:
<STRONG>@SS so you basically agree with me? </STRONG>

How should I know? I'm just an ignorant American.

Honestly, I don't remember what it was you were saying, nor do I remember what I said.

Oh, and just to clear something up, please quit using "yankee"(and other forms of the word) to refer to Americans. I am an American, but I ain't no yankee. Yankees are those who are born/raised in the northern part of the United States. It is very insulting to call a southerner a yankee.

[scully1]

Originally posted by Sailor Saturn:
<STRONG>Oh, and just to clear something up, please quit using "yankee"(and other forms of the word) to refer to Americans. I am an American, but I ain't no yankee. Yankees are those who are born/raised in the northern part of the United States. It is very insulting to call a southerner a yankee.</STRONG>

DAMN straight!! In fact, I get insulted when northerners in general are called Yankees. The term should be strictly limited to us New Englanders.

[at99]

Originally posted by Mr Sleep:
<STRONG>@At99, i really wonder about you, do you even know what the forum rules state, I quote "Flaming, humiliating, ridiculing, or belittling other members will not be tolerated. If you have an issue with another member, take it to private messages or email."

You can in no way argue with your breaking of these rules, you have ridiculed 2 members, it is not the first time, you continue to do it, you may have valid arguments, - i am not sure on that issue - however the way you conduct yourself and your general manner towards other members is less than satisfactory. You could have taken these personal problems to PM, but you decided to make a big deal of it in this discussion.

Consider yourself warned (And not for the fist time )

[ 11-19-2001: Message edited by: Mr Sleep ]</STRONG>

Mr Sleep you are not clear in the differnce in setting out to insult someone or to justify a silly point.

You are also guilty (as we all are to a point) of selectively morality.
Meaning it is OK for others to personally insult others in this thread but I cant say peep. What about others?

Again if you read my previous post I have personally ascused of being racist for which I deny and accused of some bizarre non-existant term 'culture racism'. Of which I will defend myself.

Being 'insulted' by some remarks is in 'the eye of the beholder'. Someone may get offended and someone believes they are telling the truth. In a court of law I believe you dont have a case against me.
It is all a matter of intent.

You are assuming that the other people have a justified right to be offended by me. Explain this one for me?

Define for me what you think constitutes 'insulting or belittling someone'


You must get in touch with current media reports to find out about what is being said. You will be suprised!

Ask other people view of what I have said and really ask yourself have I acted correctly. Maybe you should ask me first in a more poilite way to explain myself.

[Sailor Saturn]

Originally posted by at99:
<STRONG>Mr Sleep you are not clear in the differnce in setting out to insult someone or to justify a silly point.

You are also guilty (as we all are to a point) of selectively morality.
Meaning it is OK for others to personally insult others in this thread but I cant say peep. What about others?

Again if you read my previous post I have personally ascused of being racist for which I deny and accused of some bizarre non-existant term 'culture racism'. Of which I will defend myself.

Being 'insulted' by some remarks is in 'the eye of the beholder'. Someone may get offended and someone believes they are telling the truth. In a court of law I believe you dont have a case against me.
It is all a matter of intent.

You are assuming that the other people have a justified right to be offended by me. Explain this one for me?

Define for me what you think constitutes 'insulting or belittling someone'


You must get in touch with current media reports to find out about what is being said. You will be suprised!

Ask other people view of what I have said and really ask yourself have I acted correctly. Maybe you should ask me first in a more poilite way to explain myself.</STRONG>

I've got a little advice for you, at99, and I'm speaking from personal experience. Don't argue this point with the mods. Even if you think you're not breaking the rules, it is not your job to interpret the rules in the way you think they should be interpretted. It is the job of the moderators and these people have been appointed to the position because they are considered best able to interpret and enforce the rules accordingly.

Even if you didn't intend to insult/offend anyone, pay attention to the moderator's warnings. From what you've said, you seem to not want to insult anyone. Use these warnings as a guideline to better discern what would be considered insulting and what wouldn't be considered insulting.

This is just a little advice from personal experience. I hope you use it well.